How to Properly Ask for WordPress Support and Get It

We help dozens of users on a daily basis providing them with free WordPress support help either via our twitter, or our contact form. As a volunteer providing free support, every now and then it’s hard not to get frustrated with new users who ask questions in accusatory tone without taking the time and consideration to read or search through past information. At the same time we also understand the feeling of being completely overwhelmed by so much information because we were beginners too at one point. In this article, we will show you how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.

Before You Ask, Understand this:

Before asking for WordPress support or help regarding a specific plugin or theme, you need to understand that WordPress is an open source community project. Everyone is welcome to create a plugin, theme, contribute patches to core, suggest/fix bugs, etc. WordPress is free, and so are most of the themes and plugins that you use with it.

Individual plugin developers or theme authors are NOT always part of the official WordPress core team. Often the plugins they release for FREE are something they created for their own use in their free time, or something they created for a client. So unless they are selling the plugin or theme, you should assume that they are not making any money from it.

Most of these developers make their income from doing freelance client projects. Even though most developers are ok with helping with a few small things, each will have a different point in which they will want to be paid for the extra support. The more respectful and thankful that you are, the more inclined they will be to help you out for little or no charge.

Remember you pay NOTHING to use the plugin, so the least you can pay the developer is some respect

Video Tutorial

If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.

How to Properly Ask the Right Question?

The best place to ask for support for free plugins is in the support forums. You can find the support forum by going to the specific plugin’s page on the repository and clicking the support tab (this ensures that your support question is tagged for the plugin author)

Before you create the support thread, make sure that you have gone through the FAQ page. It’s also best to google the problem to see if someone else have answered it already.

In your support thread, you want to be respectful, clear and concise. A wrong example would be:

If you write in an accusatory tone like that, you will come off as an A$$. Chances are that you will never receive any help either.

You should be mindful that you are asking an expert to take their valuable time and answer your question for free. One of the best way to show respect is list everything you have done up to that point to solve the problem. This shows that you are not some troll who just want others to do their work for free of charge. The right way of asking the question would be:

Thank you for creating your awesome XYZ plugin. For some reason, I’m can’t get it to work right, and I would really appreciate if you can help me with it.

I’m using WordPress version:
Plugin Name version:

I did this:

I expected the plugin to do this:

Instead it did this: (Include any error messages here)

My site is hosted with:

I have tried the following solutions:

I tried the issue in the following browsers:

Thank you for taking your time out to help. I really appreciate it

In a support message like above, you are addressing all the possible things a developer would need to answer your question. Occasionally, they might ask to see your site’s URL and/or the list of plugins you have activated.

After you have created the support thread, you can always nicely reach out to the developer on twitter which can help your chances of getting a faster response. An example tweet would be:

Hey @twitterhandle, I am having an issue with Plugin name. Would appreciate if you can help: Link to support thread.

Note: Allow for at least 24 hours to get a response. You don’t know what timezone the author is in, and what their current work schedule looks like.

Whatever you do, please DO NOT call them even if you see their number listed on their website. You also don’t want to SPAM all of their communication channels. For example, a support thread + tweet is good enough.

Commercial Plugin + Themes

When using a commercial plugin or theme, it is always recommended to use the appropriate channels of support. Most commercial products like Gravity Forms, StudioPress, Sucuri, etc have designated support areas. Asking questions anywhere aside from their designated support areas would not get you much help.

For example: when a user comes to us asking for commercial theme support, we simply ask them to ask on the appropriate channels.

We do this not to be rude, but to do the right thing. When you purchase a commercial plugin or theme, it comes with support. If you downloaded a commercial plugin/theme without paying for it through a torrent site, then you don’t deserve our support.

Lastly, just because you paid for the product doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be nice. You should always be nice to the support personal. Most of those guys/girls really enjoy helping others, but you can really ruin their day by using negative words. So please be nice.

Troubleshooting

Nobody likes to help those who don’t want to help themselves. You should always try to troubleshoot the common WordPress problems. The best way to test plugin conflicts is by deactivating all WordPress plugins and activate them one by one. You can also fix other errors that might occur such as:

Conclusion

You always want to be nice when asking for WordPress support. Once you receive satisfactory resolution, we highly recommend that you spread the kind words about that developer. You can also buy them a beer or coffee by donating a few bucks. Lastly, if you have any WordPress questions feel free to ask us using our our twitter, or our contact form.

I had a young man build a WordPress site for our church, and he did give me some training on how to maintain it. I however cannot seem to get anything done on it. Just changing text or pictures in some of the slideshows seems to be beyond my ability to do. Are there people who are basically on retainer for people like me, to make changes when needed for a reasonable monthly cost? We don’t make a lot of changes, but need them done when we want them to be. My site got created around Easter and so that message is still on my page. It is now approaching Christmas and I would like to update it but can’t seem to recall how to do it, and the person who built it is not available to help me.

There are many freelancing websites like Upwork, Freelancer, and Fiverr. You can find WordPress developers there that can help you make changes to your website at reasonable rates.

Meanwhile, we will recommend you to keep trying. There is a slight learning curve but once you get past this, you will be able to manage your website without paying anyone. WordPress is used by millions of users and most of its userbase consists of non-techy people who are managing their own websites without much difficulty.

I need a little help. I need to know where to access the code on my home page, to fix the bottom of the middle row. Here is my site: you can easily see what I need to clean up. I have fixed it in the customize Crockett Coon Cap page, but that’s not the real page. I can’t save it from there. Where do I find the code to fix it? I can edit all the other pages, and the side bars on my home page, but not the center column. It’s not in appearance, edit.
Thank you!
Sylvia

Hello, I need help. I know just enough to be dangerous. I have had a blog on WordPress since 2008, when trying to go to my site i couldn’t get in , started another one I need to get rid of the latest one and I can’t get in to the original…I have no idea how I got myself into this mess lol…. Help….

Not a plug-in question, but a sidebar/menu question. Already asked the WP user forum here at UW, and they weren’t able to help. If this isn’t in your bailiwick, that’s fine, but i thought I’d ask.

I created a custom menu and sidebar and for some reason it appears twice in the RH sidebar. I’ve double-checked and, no, I didn’t create two of the same sidebars, so how did the duplicate happen, and how do I get rid of it?

hi there
i want to build a site with wordpress using plugins etc just like the following examples

i understand the in depth features / database structure of the above examples
is it possible to do this via wordpress if so what plugins would you recommend or what is the best way for me to approach this

i am familiar with wordpress and in the past i have done a few e-commerce sites, but doing something as complex as the above examples is out of my league or might not be

It depends on what features you will need and how you will be implementing them. You can make a list of features that you will need and then use Google search to find plugins that can add those features.

So I’ve been all over searching for help and it is very hard to find. Based on what I’ve read, I understand why WP may detest questions and as a result they made sure it will be hell to get in contact with them directly

My site has been down (“This site cannot be found” message) and I contacted my host and was referred back to WP, went to the forums and saw that I have to speak with my domain registrar directly – and now that’s another problem, because how? I’m so overwhelmed.

I am facing wordpress Admin Area Issue. Website is opening fine. But When I try to access Admin area then it takes too much load time and most of the cases timeout problem occurs. I tried to disable all the plugins, changed theme, try to shift website to another server. But the problem is still there. Anyone faced that type of issue. Help plz.
There is no server load or too much traffic issue.

I’m a subscriber to Michael Steinman’s JAZZ LIVE blog via AOL email. When I click on his highlighted link to hear audio, I’m taken to the next page, click again on that link for audio, but get nothing. All of my other audio inputs work fine (Amazon,Spotify,YouTube,Netflix, my inboard CD player, etc). Michael suggested I contact you. Can you unravel my mystery. I’m on Windows 7 & using the current updated version of Firefox. I have a fast, well powered Lenovo H530 Desktop.
Thanks.

Sid Sirulnick

PS: My first attempt at sending this to you was via my AOL account. I received an email stating Mail Undeliverable because it was not from verified sender, or words close to tat. I had clicked on the icon I Am Not a Robot, as instructed before hitting submit, & was still blocked. If you get this, please respond to my AOL address…

I am about to give up entirely, although I have 4 WP.con blogs that I have been running very successfully. Now I am stumped on my latest, and what will be, I believe, my most important blog.
It is “The Seventh Tango”

Everything was going along great until, somehow, I inadvertently labeled it as “private,” rather than “public.” So now, when I go there, I am informed that “the owner” has made it private, so I am asked to enter the user name and password. Well, I screwed up somehow and gave the wrong password. And there I remain stuck. I have created new passwords two or three times, and none of them work. I’m sure I am doing upteen things wrong, but I am, well, old, and my hands get shakier, the more I try.

End of story.

Please help me. My head wants so much to be pounded against the wall. ;- O

I’m back. A few minutes ago, I tried one more time to create a new password (this time via one of my other blogs, this one public) using the same user ID, and it worked this time. All is okay, except that I am embarrassed for taking up your time. Sorry.

Hallo, I am trying to create a wordpress website where members can register, then recruit other people to work under them where they register under the person. The website also needs to have a way for members to keep track of people registered under them, the problem is that i don’t know where to start and what plugins to use.. any help will be highly appreciated.

I have created a twenty fifteen child theme but i am still wondering what is the best method to

add style sheets to that, like i know there are two methods using enqueue or giving it’s link in
header.php file. But i really want to know the difference between theme and if you can please
tell me what is better option to use ?

Hi all, good day. I’m new to WordPress and have been trying to set it up on my laptop. My local server is wamp and my operating system is is Windows 10.
I have successfully setup wamp and found it running great.
My problem is setting up WordPress but that isn’t going well. I have the worpress folder in wamp/www folder and has edited the wp-config.php but when I try to load the welcome page of WordPress I get this

I need help I changed something in my admin and now I cannot log into admin I have tried .php but the internal server error comes up how can I get into the admin so I can remove what I did wrong please help

I have a really long WP page that I edit in wp-admin. All of a sudden, it is very slow to edit. When I go to make a change, I have to wait for the cursor to start flashing, and then when I go to edit, I can only type a few letters before it stops. Then, I have to wait for the cursor to flash again, before I can continue with the edit.

Hi, i have gone through the section on menus in the official WP documentation but not found the answer to my question. I have more than one question but all would be answered by me finding out where/how in WP a menu item link be changed.
1. A link to a page might be changed to a link to an external site.
2. A link to a page might be changed to null by replacing the link with # ( Example: a main menu item with a drop down of sub menu items might not link to a page (as is quite common on websites).
I don’t to want to create a custom menu.
I don’t want to create a new menu item. I simply want to know how to change an existing link that takes a user somewhere when a menu item is clicked.
Any help is appreciated!
WP 4.5.2 (Self hosted)

Hi so I’m new to all this and I’ve basically gotten everything down so far but I’m just wondering if there is a way to add a background color to a widget? Just a plain white one. The internet keeps saying to do this and that code but I have no idea how. Any suggestions? Thank you!

Hi, we have a non-profit website using a free WordPress platform. For whatever reason, we can never get it to look right and put properly placed images etc. Getting support or filtering through massive forum topics has been daunting for a tiny staff! Have spent a lot of time and do enjoy playing around with it, but it’s not coming out like we hope! We don’t have a tech team – you’re reading it!
Help.

I am a relatively inexperienced WP user and am struggling to find an answer to my questions, despite searching! (1) I need to create a page which is not visible in the menu structure and can only be accessed by clicking a link. Can you help me with this? (2) The add link button seems to no longer work for me! I guess I could try to add using HTML, but…….

It seems like your menu is set to automatically display any new pages you create. You can easily change that by manually creating a navigation menu. Make sure that the box next to ‘Auto add pages’ is unchecked. After that only the pages you add to the menu will appear in menu.

Hi – I hope this is the right place to seek advice. I’m trying to launch this website:

While building the site, I had my Visibility set to “Discourage search engines from indexing the site.” A few days ago I changed that to “Allow search engines to index this site.” But now trying to Google the site by name, “Los Papeles de Joaquin Saura” or just by “Joaquin Saura” doesn’t find it. If I type the full web address, or just , the site comes does come up, but in a very unsatisfactory way. The google search result says:

joaquin saura – WordPress.com
joaquinsaura.wordpress.com/ – Translate this page
A description for this result is not available because of this site’s robots.txt – learn more.

The “robots.txt” link was completely unintelligible to me. I read the “learn more,” but I still don’t know what I need to do to (1) add descriptive information for the search result and (2) get the site to come up in searches properly in the first place.

Removing the option Discourage search engines from indexing the site will allow search engines to index your site. Sometimes it may take them a while to properly display your site in search results. Robots.txt is a special file which is used to tell search engines how to index your site. You can find it in your site’s root folder.

I have my site on the Twenty Twelve theme. I would like to switch it to something like Genesis or DeliPress. But I am afraid of losing rankings or having permalinks change (people told me both these things can happen). Is there a way to know what would happen from changing a theme?

Hi! I’ve been using wordpress for my non-profit organization for a couple of years now. Two days ago I updated a few plug-ins and the site crashed. I deactivated all plug-ins and slowly was able to get the site up (more or less), by activating plug-ins one by one in order to find the updates that were causing the crash. However, now that the site is back up, I am unable to publish new pages. I can save drafts and preview the new pages with no problem. But when I go to publish them, the small round “clock” icon starts to turn, but the pages never publish and the icon never finishes “turning”. Any suggestions on what I could do? Thanks in advance.

Most likely due to a missing closing tag in HTML or PHP. Take a look at different template files in your theme. Press CTRL+F to search for ‘page content’ and see if you are missing closing an HTML or PHP tag around it. Backup your theme before you make any changes to it.

I’m a complete novice and have been blogging my way through designing my Woocomerce site.

It’s a flower shop site and I need to have some sort of date picker tool. For example, certain delivery dates blocked out for specific products and the ability to pick same day delivery for other products.

Hi,
i have a wordpress bog and woo commerce site where I sell some paper crafting supplies
I am unhappy with a few thing on the store part of it and don’t know how to change it or if it can be changed.
1. over top of each of my products upper top there is a small white rectangular shape that inhibits the ability to see the whole product. Annoying as heck.
2. the list of companies I carry products from needs to be on the home page but the customer has to click on the shop and then click on one of the choices before they actually get to see the whole list of products carries. I don’t know what to do.
Any help I an get is greatly appreciated. The store address is if you want to take a look.
thanks

I purchased a theme and the author doesn’t seem to respond to anyone any kind of support question since 11 months ago. I just made a post on the WordPress.org supoort forums. I hope someone could help.

Great article. As someone who tries to help others when they find themselves in trouble, I know how important it is to give as much information as possible right from the start. I hope this article is seen by a lot of people who may need it.

Oh my Gosh I love this post!!!! I have a blog with tons of free WordPress Video Tutorials and so people often ask me questions.

Most people are very respectful and thankful. Nobody has been negative so far (because I do not have as many blog followers as you do and have not been around as long as you have). However, it would be nice if people would realize that they can get their questions answered much more accurately by the person who actually designed the free theme or plugin they are using.

And while people have always been respectful in asking for my help, it would really help me if they gave me as much information as possible about their site / problem and tried to troubleshoot the problem themselves, so I can more quickly zero in on the problem myself.

As my list of blog followers grows, I can see more of these issues arising as more and more people seek out my help online. I will be referring them to this blog post.

P.S. I used to work on the phone in customer service many years ago. People that were nice to me got great service. I would make an extra effort to solve their problem. People that acted like condescending asshats — not so much. LOL

Great post! I must add to the trouble shooting that a VERY common issue is just simply cache related. Clear your cache and hey presto you can now see your changes. (If your not sure on how to do this, Google for “Clear Cache + Hard Refresh”)

Thanks for choosing to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our comment policy, and your email address will NOT be published. Please Do NOT use keywords in the name field. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation.

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

Get over 63% off on Bluehost packages and a free domain of your choice.

Featured In

About WPBeginner®

WPBeginner is a free WordPress resource site for Beginners. WPBeginner was founded in July 2009 by Syed Balkhi. The main goal of this site is to provide quality tips, tricks, hacks, and other WordPress resources that allows WordPress beginners to improve their site(s).